Grass

The hem of her pastel sundress is  fluttering in the wind. It isn’t  stormy, just windy enough to  unsettle the mundane nature of her  life, and softly, adding to her allure  by blowing charms into the  shimmers of her soul.

God has been kind enough today. The skies are set a brilliant, deep blue, clouds establishing their presence, but doing nothing to exemplify it. Beauty, they say, takes a million forms; sadly, most of them remain oblivious to our eyes and hearts alike.

Her slender legs, knee deep in the weeds, work their way past the lush green edge and reach the concrete. A strong rush of wind upsets her lustrous brown locks and her fingers end up tucking the strands back, behind her ear, a little hesitance, a touch of anticipation. She can’t stand still; the restlessness is building up with every passing minute.
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Off at some distance, two children, sit, cross-legged, by the stream. The girl child is nearly 7, the boy perhaps a year or two older. They carry little blocks of wood, a few pebbles and little blue-green spheres.
“No, don’t put that in the water!” says the boy to the girl, whose frail arms extend forward, holding one such sphere. Though she’s seemingly fragile by her looks, her hands are unusually sturdy, as she holds the object almost in contact with the water’s surface, ready to submerge it in.

With a quick flip of her cute head, the black of her hair falling over her eyes, she asks him, “Why not?”
“ It’s beautiful, look at it. It’s blue, it’s green. 

If you put it in, you never know how bad it could get.”

“But it will always be beautiful! “, she quips in.
He looks at her, half wanting to push her instead,
 in the water, the other half wanting to cling onto the sphere.
“ It’s not just that, what if bad things happen to it, in there?” That is all he can manage.
“Bad things don’t scare it, it’s strong, see?" And she holds her hand out for him to see.
“Yes, now give it back to me, I’ll take care of it, you don’t have to worry”, he says, stretching his fingers, in anticipation, aiming for a proper hold.


But being the little devil that she is, she snatches it away.


Giggling, teasing him, her eyes smiling, she whispers, “It will swim in the water and then go off to sleep.”
“ It can’t swim. It will die.” His annoyance is building up. But he takes a deep breath in, and now manages a look that says he’s nothing more than a little perplexed by her behaviour.


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Standing against a pillar on the roadside, she looks ahead, taking in as much as the place has to offer to her eyes. A 6-lane, deserted highway separates her from the vast expanse of fields on the other side. The sun nowhere to be seen, she looks at her watch. He’s an hour late.


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She’s still giggling and his face is now red with anger.
“It will die. Do you want it to die?” he asks her, a pleading edge to his voice.
“Maybe it will die, after all! “, she teases him further.

“Give it to me. I will keep it safe”, he mutters, through clenched teeth.
She senses his anger, drops the ball onto the grass and looks away, pretending to be busy with arranging the different logs.
He can almost hear the tears as they slip down her face and onto her pretty dress.
He picks up the little ball.

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The sun shows up, ready to move over the hills and sink into a sleep, for it is obliged to pay everyone another visit the next day.
To walk into the sunset, together, it was something she had longed for. But, with no signs of any oncoming traffic, her heart sinks. Still on the road, she tries to move and get the frown off her face.
A current of icy wind blows past her, and she realizes she isn’t well equipped to handle the cold. It’s time to return home.
She takes in a deep breath, also taking in the absolute, flawless beauty of the miracle she’s witnessing.
Hues of green, blue, yellow amalgamating in the gorgeous cover on the earth and a rich, vivid orange, flirting with a touch of crimson in the sky.


She lets out a sigh, his name on her lips, attached, unspoken and so loved.

With a heavy heart, she turns. But his arms find her, and then envelop her. His lips, barely inches away from hers.
He’s finally home. So is she.


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As they walk back together, they overhear a conversation.
“You know it belongs to us”, says a boy.
“I wasn’t going to throw it away”, mumbles a girl.
“I know. “
“And?”
“I’m sorry”, says the boy.
She giggles, again.
And smiling, he hands her back, not just one but all the spheres.

 
                 

Peaches and plums. Forget the strawberries.

Peaches and plums, a hint of red; and in between, rests, everything that ever stood for warmth.

Even the green the grass wears seems welcoming, as if every single dew-drop has gone out of its way to make the story more appealing to your eyes.

Happy picture?

 She had grown accustomed to the dark,even inviting it in, more so out of habit than anything else. We seek the familiar,don’t we?
She shifts her elbow, now supporting her face, lying down, in bed. She sits, waiting for her stroke of genius, the reverberation of her thoughts,nearly deafening.

We live in a masquerade of dignity, our swords nothing but eye candy and our armour, rusted. Chunks falling out, with every look we’re faced to make over our backs. Certainly not the pretty picture you wanted it to be. And well even if pictures could be pretty, who said truth ever is?

It wasn’t like melancholy came crashing down her  with a shield so weak, and rattled though she would be, peace visited her more often than the storms. It was the tainted image of every one (which included herself) that she had conjured up, which had taken its own place in her mind and now,refused to budge,the images tormented her. And they shook the very foundations on which her world and ideals were built. The fact that she too was equally pathetic, if not more, crushed her, repeatedly, in waves of shame. And visits to these shady corners left her speechless, out of the sheer humiliation they brought.

We have our own definitions of misery, and we differ in how we measure it too. What makes the guy she met today, have sleepless nights, may not even make her flinch.And maybe what makes her stay up all night, may only make someone else have a good laugh.

Staring at the walls since the past few hours, she  now lets out a chuckle, “ I’m winning,you know” But her muffled laughter doesn’t bother the wall, it still stands tall, unflustered.

Escaping into some careless,wreckless journey for her mind is no more a solution. It long lost its allure.

The one comfort she knows is that love takes you out of the guilt ride you’ve  taken. Love smothers you, spoils you. But then, love accepts you. And makes you accept yourself too, more often than not.
So,this toast, to love.
Ready to doze off, she turns her head, only to see a reflection, another picture, only so real. A kid, his hair the shade of sunlight and eyes glimmering as bright as the sun itself, is staring right back at her.

He’s beckoning the world to indulge in a smile.Who is she to resist?

And then she remembers how much he loves kids. And, she is all smiles.

i adore you because you own that car,that house,that face

A little shade of near- misanthropy crushes your otherwise human-heart and all that goes into the making of a soul, into mulch. It’s more like a pulpy mass whose stink can never wane off your breath, as long as you walk this earth. Add narcissism to the equation and your existence should be questionable. Well, not yours, but mine. Who are we kidding?

Humans, to me, have always been at the extreme – dirty edge when it comes to disgust causing-agents. Worse than cockroaches (no offense to you guys, but don’t even start an argument, you are creepy) And now that I find myself more and more surrounded by these mean, shrewd, calculating ,heartless butchers for people, I find myself helpless, left, defenseless to their ruthlessness and their mind-games and all such endeavors which draw nothing but spite, hateful spite from me.  So as I crumble, day by day, shrinking into a dark, forgotten space, some oblivion, I could happily pet a cockroach.

What seems shittier? That money and the power to hold 'more' in your hands is taking over the entire human species, or that this greed and obsession is all that defines a human being now? In between the gold-rush, the money-hogging, the luxury-rain, humans have been reduced to a sub-species. And that is what you ought to call the making of sub-humans, with exteriors as that of humans, and ethics, values, purpose, goals, work, rotting away, and the stench unbearable. The thought makes me dizzy.

Since when did we learn to set everything aside with our oh-so-judgmental eyes (and minds filled with all but bowls-full of crap), considering how much financial-value it held, to us and maybe to the fucked up stranger we happened to cross on the road, who was ‘low’ enough to be in possession of such and such thing, or ‘high’ enough by our cheap standards. In that one single flashing moment, when we crossed paths(or eyes) all that mattered to us was, the size of the bulge of his wallet. Oh fuck you, if you think this is laughable. But all situations considered and petty assumptions not even brought near to the subject, this is exactly what it comes down to. Money,luxuries,wealth, and then another blunder goes in as our doing, when we , low-lives take a step down shit-heads+ crap-mouths lane to think of success in terms of these parameters. I feel nauseated.

Vanity driven machines, cold, unfeeling zombies, that’s what has become of us. We are now accustomed to tuning ourselves in a way where we give not a tiny rat’s ass to the lengths we have to go to snatch away, what may or may not be ours. Filthy greed, 'the more the better' , the things we step over and crush in the process, aplenty.  Creating ego satisfaction points out of every little damn thing and thus, making the transition from egoistic to ego-centric individuals, because for each one of us,the nucleus that is running the world is ‘us’, our own self.

And to please thyself, lay not a fuck to the shameless trampling we undertake, envisaging a world where we alone matter. No other soul comes close, no matter how thick the blood or how all-consuming the love might be which flows between thy self and that other individual (who may or may not serve the sub-human paradigm). 

Impervious to the disgrace we bring to us all, we shamelessly carry on. Pseudo worlds, pseudo us.

Different day,same red

Backdrop of a deep crimson
fiery red’s past,
the craving mellowed down,
death creeping up,
working its slow course

Heavy-lidded eyes and she vows to tell
no other tale,
not another word
that her eyes don’t offer


“Do we…?”

Her eyes fixated
on that day,
sun sinking beyond valleys,
and them  two,
never-time, never-land

Strong, crisp winds
the chill pierces through ,
Intoxicated, she edges closer
The window,
it holds a promise

Her slender fingers ,
over the red satin,
among the heavy curtains
a wide enough slit,
But hope still can’t sneak in

Withdrawing herself,
never lowering her gaze,
no tinge of disappointment,
steadies herself,
elegance, writing every step

“Send him in”,she says
without the slightest quiver.
Turns her back,
drifting into blankness,
red, yet again

Hate-love-lust,
slivers of her being
She swivels down the same path,
deliberating whether to,
make him look,
as she concedes defeat,
ending up, where she is.
And inside her,
long breeds a longing,
that aches her body, much
and heart worse,
an urge,improbable ; for her to be saved,
and saved by him alone.

The door shuts.
A man has entered,
The black silks,
drop, over her shoulders.

And with a cursory
movement, where her fingers,
meet the edge of her dewy-eye,
she turns,
her heart carrying an unspoken wish,
the wish- that it be him.